Dawson Filter as He Relates to Taxis

Hank pulled an impressively long beverage straw from his overcoat, slid it into his company helicopter’s gas tank, and hopped off of a helicopter pad. He placed the other end in a convertible which presumably belonged to him, and proceeded to holler “Hank the Embezzler siphons again!” from the various portions of his lungs.

Dawson watched Hank drive in the general direction of the horizon; and turned to Twelve-Anne to say “So that was that person.”

Twelve-Anne nodded, as if to say “Yes”. She flailed her arm at a would-be-passing-by taxi. Upon seeing her arms, the driver changed his earlier plan of not stopping to a new idea of his, which revolved heavily around the concept of stopping. The Quest Committee clambered into the cab, only to find that they were in the cab. The door’s lock locked the door behind them; and the taxi master turned around to collect the fare.

“You’re probably wondering why I just turned around.” Said the man, in an accent he’d picked up from playing too much tetris, “It’s to collect the fare. I enjoy the concept of money, and I think there might be some laws about labour saying that compensation needs to exist. But you know all about laws, don’t you, Dawson Filter?”

The driver ripped off a Paul Simon mask from his face; revealing that his true identity was something more along the lines of Wayne Rubblefish.

“I am currently surprised!” Dawson exclaimed; and made a note to himself to use the word ‘currently’ more often. It had a sort of ‘pop’ that was typically reserved for names, and all of those R’s in a row sure did a throat good. When I say it had a sort of pop, I do mean this exclusively in the past tense. ‘Currently’ was pronounced completely differently in those days, using vowels unheard of in modern culture.

“Here is our fare.” Twelve-Anne placed a wad of six dollar bills in Wayne’s hand. “It is now in your hand. Speaking of your hand, what is it and your assorted other parts doing here? Also, another thing I should say: we would like for you to use the fare to take us to a shack on 79th street. Or rather, we’d like you to take us to a shack on 79th street, which is why we are paying you. We would like for you to use the fare for clean living and legal fun.”

“Sure to the part about 79th street. And to the question, I say this. This is also included in what I say. As is this. And to finish off, I say to you that I am here to mentally torture you; and to watch over what belongs to me. You do recall that I have a deed on Sylvester Denny, don’t you? Or were you too busy saving his life to be good at things?”

“Maybe you owned him on Ganymede, but look out of your window.” Dawson Filter said, “That’s no moon. And do you want to know a thing? That fistful of wads of taxicab fare is all in Canadian currency. And it just so happens that Manhattan’s not in Canada.”

Wayne Rubblefish unlocked the door closest to Twelve-Anne. “Fine. You win.” The door opened. “The cab hasn’t been moving, by the bye. That helicopter pad belongs to the shack you were so mad about getting to. Thank you for the money and the memories.”

Twelve-Anne and Dawson left the taxicab, just as you might have imagined. They looked up to the skies; and knew several assorted facts, including that they were one step closer to saving Sylvester Denny’s life than the last step.